Health
Smoking worsens asthma distress
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-10 10:07
People who have asthma and who also smoke could reverse some of the damage to their lungs by saying no to cigarettes, new Dutch research suggests.
"We found that exposure to cigarette smoke appears to increase the thickness of the epithelium, or lining, of the airways in the lung," said Martine Broekema, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "This may be the underlying cause of the fact that smoking asthma patients experience more asthma symptoms, such as shortness of breath and phlegm production, compared to non-smoking asthma patients."
The researchers looked at 147 people with asthma symptoms, including 35 smokers, 46 former smokers and 66 people who had never smoked.
People who currently smoked had more cells that produce mucous than did those who never smoked, the researchers found. "These pathological findings were associated with the severity of phlegm production reported by the asthma patients, suggesting a causal relationship between the two," Broekema said. "Smoking asthmatics also showed a distinct inflammatory profile in their lungs compared to never-smoking asthmatics."
